Jews are a singular confusion — difficult to define, awkward to describe, impossible to understand. All the virtues, all the vices, every pleasure, every pain — nothing is spared them.

Monotheism owes its existence not to philosophic speculation about the nature of reality or knowledge or virtue, but to acceptance of reality identified with a supreme being.

The unlettered man who prayed to his maker would be heard; the pedant reciting a faultless invocation would be ignored.

The [Jewish] Sabbath was not intended to be simply a desert of prohibitions, but rather an oasis for moral restoration and seemly pleasure-one was to eat, drink, even be merry.

At Vatican Council II, one dissenting Roman Catholic theologian declared: "Yes, the Bible says "Be fruitful and multiply," but that was when the population was two per square world.

Writing is an affair of yearning for great voyages and hauling on frayed ropes.

In Jewish tradition, death-defying devotion to scholarship was the stuff of saintliness.

Theology emerged not as a course of knowledge but as a feast of homily and imagination and exaggeration in which every man could find his image and his portion. And yet there were limits.

America has a way of inventing tradition each morning and erasing the past by nightfall, and thehold of ancient custom is endangered by a thousand cicumstances.

God's greatest blessing is children. The only problem is that you have to support them. It's a problem, not a disadvantage.

It was God who dictated what man should believe and do, leaving man the freedom to accept or scoff, to obey or disregard.

I'll be singing hymns to the rafters, be praising His goodness so loud they're going to have to turn down the volume in Heaven.

The only excuse for not improving yourself is not taking the time and effort to.

But optimism dribbles away when horror repeats.

Life always gets harder towards the summit - the cold increases, responsibility increases

Nothing destroys authority more than the unequal and untimely interchange of power stretched too far and relaxed too much.

I dont meet many people who are talking about shows on Showtime.

Goals. There's not telling what you can do when you get inspired by them.

The difference, so observable in men's understandings and parts, does not arise so much from their natural faculties, as acquired habits.

The fact that people actually want my autograph is crazy.

The very might of the human intellect reveals its limits.